News of the Week

For the first time ever, a vaginal gel has unequivocally blocked the transmission of HIV, it was reported online this week in Science and in a presentation at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

Last week's sharply divided opinion on whether the Food and Drug Administration should pull the glucose-lowering drug Avandia from the U.S. market for potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks in diabetes patients has left a lingering scientific question: What should happen to a study, called TIDE, that compares Avandia and a competing drug, Actos?

A new plan by the National Science Foundation to fold three programs aimed at preparing more minority students to enter careers in science and engineering into a still-to-be-defined initiative has scientists and university administrators involved in the programs up in arms, and Congress is telling NSF to go back to the drawing board.

This month, China announced that it will cut exports this year of rare-earth elements by 40%, which could ground fledgling efforts to build clean-energy industries in the United States and other Western countries.

ScienceInsider reported this week that climate scientist and activist Stephen Schneider, 65, died 19 July of an apparent heart attack, ending a nearly 40-year career doing climate science, assessing climate science for policymakers, explaining it articulately to the public, and defending it energetically against skeptics, among other stories.

ScienceNOW reported this week on a way to better quantify a couple's chance of having a child using IVF, why gorillas play tag, a Jupiter-sized comet, and new studies showing that adult cells reprogrammed to resemble embryonic cells retain signatures of the tissue from which they came, among other stories.

Paul Nurse spoke with Science last week about his past, his recent suggestion to bolster U.K. funding for 100 to 150 top researchers, and his busy future as both president of the Royal Society and founding director of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation.

Environmentalists and independent energy analysts argue that by improving efficiency and investing in renewable energy, Chile could find more than enough power within its borders for at least a decade—and without more dams. So far, however, energy planners have not been persuaded.